Bragging & Begging

On Wednesday we (Slam Industries) officially launched the Woubie program.

Today I'm doing some bragging and a whole lot of begging.

Bragging:

In late 2008 I quit the job I had for 11 years (I'm not really bragging about quitting; it's just the event that started all of this). You can read the details here: http://slamindustries.blogspot.com/2009/09/quitting-and-starting.html

Around the same time, my sister-in-law, Brenda got laid off. No severance. After working for a guy for 17 years who has enough money to spend his vacation every year in Rome. You can imagine what we think of him. Instead of whining, she became my business partner. We recruited Rob (my brother / her husband) to build the company web site, Mat (another brother) to be the voice of the company and to create awesome WoubTube videos for us and R. Noseeum (not a brother, but a great guy anyway) to do the heavy duty programming for Woubie. By "recruited", I mean we "got them to do stuff for free based on the belief that someday their share will make the work more than worthwhile".

We did it all with just 5 people. We built web sites, designed the database, wrote code, created cool graphics & moving balls and looked through hundreds of fonts. We did copious amounts of research for Woubie itself; defining data types, categories & subcategories, genres, format, statuses. We spent days and weeks searching for the best programs and services to use for billing, customer support and services. We educated ourselves about branding, social media, SEO, html, the proper format for print-ready images, how to create web-based help files and a whole slew of other processes and topics. We created an environment where we could each play to our strengths and fostered creativity that we didn't even know we possessed. Every design element, image, process and picture is ours. Every word on every page is ours (well, with the exception of the press release; we had some great input from two excellent marketing gurus for that part). Every idea from the basic concept of Woubie to the first WoubTube video has a piece of each of us in it. We are Slam and we are Woubie.

So, yes, I'm bragging a bit. It's been both incredibly fun and immensely frustrating. But most of all it's been satisfying because, well, simply because "we did it". And after all of that, we still like each other. :)

Now, on to the...

Begging:

We really need your support now. We've known for a while that when it came down to letting the world know about Woubie, we would need to rely on our friends and family for help. Quite simply because we're small and we don't have the funds that the big guys have to throw at marketing their products. Which is part of what led to the creation of the WoubTube: Shotgun Kitty video. I knew that the only way I would be able to swallow my built-in aversion to asking for help would be to find a way for it to be fun.

So here I am asking, yes, even begging, for your help.

Please take a few minutes to check out the press release and watch the video: http://www.prweb.com/releases/software_for_writers/writing_resource/prweb3399584.htm.

If you think Woubie is cool or the video is funny, please share it with your friends and family and encourage them to share it too. Let us know how you shared it and we'll add your name to our Guerrilla Marketing team page (http://slamindustriesllc.com/Guerrilla.asp).

Thank you to all of the people who have already sent out emails, posted it on Facebook or simply shown it to a friend. We'll never be able to thank you all enough for your help.